Oh shit! That wasn’t supposed to happen here in the library—you were supposed to put it on vibrator or else turn it off—and the fact that his ring was a digitized rendition of “The Theme from Rocky”—dah dahh daaahhh…daaahhhh duhh duh—made it worse. He hurriedly, furtively opened up the cell phone, hid it between his knees, swung his head about as if somebody behind him were the offender, then got down under the study table, as if he were looking for something, and said sotto voce into the phone, “Hello?”

“How’s my Greek friend who grew up Swedish in New Jersey?”

Coach never said “This is Coach Roth” or “This is Coach” or anything else to let you know who was calling. He didn’t have to, certainly not if he was calling anybody on the team or close to it. Jojo flinched instinctively—but Coach didn’t really sound like he was on his case this evening.

Jojo didn’t take any chances, nevertheless. “I’m fine, Coach.” He probably didn’t sound particularly fine, whispering from under a library table.

“Socrates,” said Coach’s voice, “you Greeks are one lucky fucking buncha people, that’s all I can tell you.”

“Whattaya mean, Coach?”

“Our friend Mr. Quat has dropped the whole thing. It’s over, Jojo. It never happened.”

Silence. Then: “How do you know, Coach?”

“The President just called me,” said Coach. “He said, ‘You can forget about it. Erase it from your memory,’ or words to that effect.”

“Wow,” said Jojo in a dull fashion, he was speaking so softly. “What happened?”

“I couldn’t tell you, Jojo. Mr. Quat is a mysterious fucking dude.”

“Wow,” said Jojo in the same flat way. “Thanks, Coach. I don’t know what to say. I appreciate the hell out of this. You’ve taken a load off—off my back, is what it feels like.”

“I’m glad to be the bearer of good tidings, Socrates. Now you don’t have to drink that hemlock cocktail.”

“Hemlock cocktail?”

“Jesus Christ, Jojo, you’re supposed to be the big Socrates scholar around here! I already told you about your boy and the hemlock. You don’t remember?”

“Oh yeah, sure.” Jojo attempted a sotto voce laugh. “Mr. Margolies mentioned the hemlock, too, Coach. I guess I just got confused about the cocktail part.” He attempted a prolonged muffled laugh to show Coach he appreciated him as a wit, too.

They said good-bye, and Jojo climbed up off the floor and back into his library chair and returned to Plato, the fitting successor to Socrates except that it turns out he was ill-fitted. Then Jojo lifted his head and leaned back in the chair and looked up at the room’s massive wooden chandeliers and reflected a bit. A smile stole across his face. Coach…The guy was too much. He could be rough. Nobody had ever treated him, Jojo, any rougher without having to roll in the dirt to pay for it. But Coach looked out for you. If anybody else started any rough stuff, Coach was right there by your side, and it was Shoot-out at the O.K. Corral for them that dared fuck with you.

Jojo shook his head and smiled at the same time. Old Quat had been around here for a while. You’d think he would have known. Nobody gave Coach any shit and remained standing afterward. Coach had talked about how both of them, coach and player, too, were examples, whether they wanted to be or not, for everybody on the campus. He hadn’t really understood what Coach meant at the time. Now he did. Coach was loyal…and he was a man.

33. The Soul Without Quotation Marks

It was nine-thirty p.m. by the time Charlotte left Adam’s and walked alone in the dark through the City of God and across the campus and reached Little Yard. What a relief it was to escape at last from Adam’s stifling, psychologically polluted sick bay of a slot…and what a sour taste remained. She felt used. Adam had made an awfully miraculous recovery from terminal neurasthenia and the imminence and immanence of death. Once he got out of bed and began reading his thirty-four e-mails and started making phone calls and trying to figure out with Greg which TV and newspaper interviews to do and which ones not to bother with, his ego began refilling so fast Charlotte could see it and hear it…Color and clear eyes returned to his face. Irony and intellectual showboating returned to his speech. “Tomorrow” returned to his vocabulary. He was so busy online and on the cell phone, he…carved out…the time it took him to thank her and say good-bye.

Her sense of relief had lasted barely one block into the City of God, however, and that had nothing to do with the slum’s much-feared bad boys, who were not to be seen, in any event. Charlotte’s night had just begun, not even counting all the homework she had yet to do for tomorrow. This was “it,” and “it” possessed her as she departed the elevator on the fifth floor of Edgerton and walked down the hall. How should she word “it” when she called Momma? Nine-thirty was awfully late to be making the call, given the diurnal cycle of country people, but she no longer had a choice. What would work best? Contrition, confession—a strictly academic confession, that is—humility, a plea for forgiveness, and a promise to make up for “it”? Or what about a by-the-way approach? “Momma, it’s me!…Oh, I just wanted to hear your voice and find out how everybody is…Good, and how is Aunt Betty’s angina?…That’s a relief. By the way, I’ve run into sort of a glitch in the academic side of things. It’s not the end of the world, and it’ll be easy to turn it around, but do you remember at Christmas when I was telling you all about…” Oh, sure…the way she must have looked and sounded to everybody…Momma was no fool. She would never swallow the notion that her prodigy’s hog wallow in misery had been induced by a glitch. Well, what about a completely true confession, an abject, hold-nothing-nothing!-back confession, committing herself to Momma’s mercy the way she did when she was a little girl?…The blessed catharsis that always followed…the blissful balm of Momma’s mercy…It had always brought peace to Charlotte’s heart precisely because Momma refused to be “realistic” about “the way things are today”…Oh Momma, Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee!…Pop. The very thought chilled Charlotte to the core. It would be as risky as trying to beat a burning fuse to the dynamite.

Round and round such calculations went until Charlotte actually took a couple of steps past the door to her room. She backtracked and opened it—

Bango!—both Erica and Beverly stood there. Ohmygod, how could she even make the call?

Beverly cocked her snoot and said, “Well! I’ve been wondering where you were. Your phone”—she gestured toward the white room telephone—“what’s going on? It’s driving me crazy.” She didn’t say it nicely.

Charlotte was surprised by her own calm and insouciance, insouciance in the literal sense: just not caring.

“You know, it’s your telephone, too, Beverly. In fact, you own it. You can pick it up and answer it or leave it off the hook or unplug it. If I’m not here, why would I care?”

Beverly bristled. To her, no doubt, those words were the equivalent of an impudent reprimand. Gesturing toward Charlotte, she turned to Erica and said in a bored manner, “My roomie.”

Silence. The moment stretched out…stretched out…and in that moment it occurred to Charlotte that she still envied the Beverlys and the Ericas and the Douches and the Psi Phi Trekkies. She envied them for being wellborn, for having money and all the clothes they wanted, for their natural assumption of social superiority and their actual attainment and enjoyment of it. She admitted this to herself, and it seemed like little more than an observation. For reasons she couldn’t have explained, if asked, she no longer felt cowed or intimidated by these people. They were what they were, and she was Charlotte Simmons. I am Charlotte Simmons. And in that moment it also occurred to her how rarely she had said that to herself over the past couple of months, and how even more rarely did it come burning into her mind with the old fire of defiance.